Re: +=

[edrx@... (Eduardo Ochs)]

Carlos Cardoso wrote:

> > I think that Lua is a fantastic language, but its syntax is sometimes
> > too verbose for people (like me!) who would like to use it for
> > one-shot programs, not only for "serious stuff" or for (there's a lot
> > of irony here, of course) programs that have to be maintainable by
> > non-programmers later. I guess that one of the main reasons to keep it
> > so simple is to make it easier to construct metaprogramming tools, but
> > these aren't ready yet...
>
> Fascinating.
>
> Your statement goes against everything I believed about part-time programmers
> (without the <IRONY> tags, of course).
>
> They usually like verbose languages, like Javascript, and don't want to
> go deep in logical constructions or sintax black magic.


Maybe you're seeing the world through business eyes, and the part-time
programmers you know are the kids that are doing home pages as a side
job...

Well, nowadays there are two different notions of "computer"; one,
more recent, says that a computer runs certain programs and lets you
play games, do office/business stuff, and access the internet; other,
that was the norm until the early 90s but is still alive and kicking
in the Free Software world, says that computers are machines that can
be programmed, and that we program them mainly because it is fun.
People with that second notion usually try many languages and choose
those that they find more powerful and more interesting; and not being
boring makes a language easier to learn, and more pleasurable to use.
How much black magic it contains usually matters little -- many people
like Perl and C++, for example. BTW, I like Forth, Tcl, Icon, Emacs
and Haskell (and now Lua), and I'm a mathematician in real life.

Cheers, and sorry for the bits of anger in my ramblings -- it's
because I have been treated as a "user" (that archetype created from
statistics and from Microsoft's contagious imagery) many times and I
still remember perfectly how it hurt...

  Eduardo Ochs
  http://angg.twu.net/
  http://angg.twu.net/eev-manifesto.html    <-- (take a look at this.)
  edrx@inx.com.br